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Obama's Inner Neocon
The great danger of Obama’s response to the street protests in Iran has been that he’d choose Iran’s thuggish ruling class over Iran’s masses on the grounds that Serious People don’t fret about human rights when grand strategy is at stake.
Now, however, at least some of the engagers are coming to understand that the violence in the streets is clear evidence that Khamenei’s gang is less pragmatic than they enthusiastically believed. After all, Mousavi is not a tie-dyed revolutionary who wants to replace the Koran in Iran’s public schools with mandatory viewings of The L Word. He is an only slightly less crazy theocrat than Ahmadinejad, who thinks, I’m guessing, that the wily thing to do is to stone slightly fewer people so that Iran can build bombs in peace.
If the regime can’t do business with the likes of Mousavi, they certainly can’t do business with Obama, no matter how many barbecues he invites them to.
The peculiar truth is that Barack Obama, for all his realist convictions, is at his best when he embraces his inner neocon. In August 2001, two brilliant neocon foreign-policy thinkers, Jeffrey Gedmin and Gary Schmitt, wrote an Op-Ed for The New York Times that blasted President Bush for not being multilateral enough. They compared him unfavorably with neocon icon Ronald Reagan, who, in their words, “linked American interests to the greater international good.” Though written before 9/11, Gedmin and Schmitt’s piece anticipated the trouble Bush’s rhetorical unilateralism would eventually cause.
Obama, like Reagan, is a master at linking American interests to the greater international good. Whether he likes it or not, his engagement strategy with Iran has been revealed as a hollow hope, one that rested on an overoptimistic interpretation of Iranian intentions. As former Bush foreign-policy adviser Peter Feaver has explained, Iran is far more likely to negotiate from a position of weakness than of strength. Rather than reassure the Iranians with a wink and a nod that we’re ready to do business, President Obama should be building an international coalition to isolate a recalcitrant Iran as thoroughly as the the West once isolated apartheid-era South Africa. Bush, to the chagrin of the neocons, could never pull this off. But Obama can.
Reihan Salam is a fellow at the New America Foundation and the co-author of Grand New Party.
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cbeenthere
Just where does the populace of Iran fit into all this? Last I looked they were speaking up rather boldly and took their licks for it.
cbeenthere
Which to me, means they can and will do it again and again and again. Doesn't appear like they even need the neocons, so what's to discuss?
allonfla
Oh. Wow. I wish Obama would read your op-eds and do exactly the opposite. He would be the Best. President. Ever. His inner Neocon? The ones that got us into the Iraq War and has cost this country hundreds of billions of dollars that could have gone to improving the lives of Americans? We've got a major threat in North Korea and you want us to approach Iran with a Neocon attitude?
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n--Y--toodogsallonfla
Blah, blah more nonsense. War war war that's all I hear. Bush had the reigns for 8 years - you know a CONSERVATIVE and he made it worse. So please tell me how conservative views here apply.
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n--Y--toodogscbeenthere
Please stop lecturing with nonsense.
allonfla
What post did you read? I wasn't talking about addressing a single issue, I'm talking about how NeoCons seem to insist on getting involved in and starting wars. We have N. Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel/Palestine - You want more?
allonfla
Excuse me, but I refuse to take advice from someone who thought Sarah Palin could run this country. He came to his senses but the fact that he once thought otherwise makes him lose all credibility with me.
pgibson
what's amazing about people like you is that you forget about the fact that we liberated 30 million people from one of the worst tyrants the world has ever seen. things may not be ideal in iraq right now, but the situation's undoubtedly better than being under the banner of a brutal dictator that tortured, maimed and murdered his own people.....just ask the cubans, burmese, north koreans and iranians. you love to talk about the billions "wasted" when you conveniently forget about the liberation of these people. ask them if the money was "wasted."
SantaFromTheNorth
@ pgibson: Sorry, that dog don't hunt. If the Iraqi people seriously wanted to overthrow Saddam, the Kurds & Shia definitely had enough bodies to do so. If they did not, they could have enlisted Iran's cash & know how to help overthrow Saddam. No reason the US had to do it. Would have been much more appropriate to finish the campaign in Afghanistan/Waziristan than open up a second front needlessly.
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n--Y--toodogsallonfla
"We will be greeted as Liberators" - LOOOOOOOOOOLLLLLL!!!!!!
30 million people who STILL live in fear of being blown up at any moment. Do you know how it feels to wake up in the morning fearing for your life? Going to sleep wondering if a bomb will land on your house? Oh yes, the Iraqi's feel sooooo liberated.
sonofloud
Let's see, were stuck in Iraq and Obama refuses to bring home the troops like he promised.
Obama is expanding the illegal war even further into Afghanistan and Pakistan.
And the neocons (I prefer the term reactionaries) want to pull Iran into this nightmare?
AmiBlue
You, sir, are a troll. Either that or an extraordinarily uninformed liberal.
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n--Y--toodogssonofloud
At least 43 people have died in missile strikes by a US drone aircraft in a militant stronghold of Pakistan, a Taliban spokesman has told the BBC.
The people killed in South Waziristan had been attending the funeral of a militant commander who had been killed in an earlier strike.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8115814.stm
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n--Y--toodogsSC0TTBL4M
Need I remind you and everyone:
He's been in office for 5 months.
AiriqS
So sonfloud,
I guess that "hope & change" is not working out for you very well?
sonofloud
Show me some hope and some change and I'll let you know. :)
Kirbonicus
Although I really take issue with anyone being compared to Reagan, being that I think he was one of the worst Presidents we've had, I have to give credit to Salam for his closing sentences: ""Bush, to the chagrin of the neocons, could never pull this off. But Obama can.""
Josh-Narins
Especially on the issues of Iraq (incl. supplying WMD precursors on purpose) and Iran (the Iran-Contra-Drugs scandal).
Double especially, for me at least, supplying them both arms at the same time while the two countries were at war with each other.
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n--Y--toodogsThis user is no longer registered.
n--Y--toodogsKirbonicus
The war in Iraq... finishing Reagan's dumb dealings.
The war in Afghanistan... our soldiers being killed with weapons and munitions sold by Reagan.
His push of the 'trickle-down' theory... you are seeing the results of that in our country right now.
cbeenthere
His standoff with the air traffic controllers, bad business. What liberal historians have given him high marks?
clearthinker
What happened to "Death to the NeoCons"?
whipmawhopma
They died, except for the zombie neocons.
Josh-Narins
It is a simple, yet unacknowledged fact that the troop buildup was not correlated with the reduction of violence in Iraq:
http://www.joshwantsthenobelprize.com/blog/combined_surge.gif
KofTX1
Ok...THAT'S IT!!!
There ought to be a law against writing total BULLSHIT! Is this guy living in some kind of parrallel universe where everything is opposite from our reality? Obama embraces his inner NeoCon?!? Even NeoCons don't buy that! "McCain's influence"?!? Please take the time to actually READ the president's statements before you start your "McCain said that first" spin. Why is this guy on here? Where are the facts? Tina, you've got to do better...
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n--Y--toodogscbeenthere
If you are so interested in the other side-- why are you new to this writer? You should be more with it. Besides his previous articles are all on this site-go for it you might educate yourself as opposed to just running your mouth with zero to say.
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n--Y--toodogscbeenthere
It was your claim about one-sided opinions on this site, not mine. I did not call you any names so do not say I did. However, I don't write epistles unless someone asks me a question, and I make no bones about where I am coming from. And I know better that to ask someone to educate me when I know full well that I will have no respect for the answer I am going to get beforehand. I don't play your games.
kysersose1982
This is one of the worst post i have ever read. Obama needs to embrace his inner neocon?, this is a joke. Lets isolate Iran like we did Iraq get another coalition of the "not so willing" and get more dead American troops so easy to sit on a pc and advocate war but not so easy to actually fight it. His inner neocon seriously what did happen to..........
"DEATH TO THE NEOCONS"
Twisted
Every time i see and Op Ed piece from this author Reihan Salam I wonder why the daily beast is actually paying for these neo con distortions of the truth or total fantasies. Yes the United States just had a presidential election and the electorate loved our direction of the past 8 years and so Dick Cheney was elected president by a landslide majority of the electorate. OK that's not what happened instead of electing an old out of shape pudgy angry shoot from the hip neo-con WASP to be president, a substantial majority of the electorate voted for a thin tall stick and ball sports loving ivy league intellectual black man, who analyzes and thinks before he speaks. You don't have to be a genius to understand that Iran's highest authority is the Ayatollah, and a council of cleric/politicians,with the president subservient to them. Only those individuals approved by the council and the Ayatollah may run for president leaving only different hard liners as candidates. Iran's xenophobic society is currently undergoing some political up heaval, however change can only come with change to the real leaders and policy makers of Iran the ruling clerics. This article totally misstates the situation in Iran it is intellectually dishonest and a continuation of the neo -con nation building craze of the past administration
BlakewilliamsNYC
I can't stand when this man "rights" articles. It's always the same message, which translates to garbled non-sense.
cbeenthere
I think he does better at his real job, here not so much.
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n--Y--toodogscbeenthere
No, from now on I will just merrily skip over, not to worry.
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n--Y--toodogscbeenthere
I read this article didn't I?I am aware of the writer's leanings. I made two short comments on why I disagreed,-- why I did- and not why everyone else should or should not. I did not write two epistles on why President Obama is not doing what I want him to do for all the kinds of reasons that I could ever dream up.
liviapeacock
Obama has grown accustomed to adulation???
Are you kidding me?
If you think that a mixed race man growing up in white America with white grandparents and an absent black father has somehow developed a personality that can't handle criticism, negativity, even outright anger, you have got to be kidding.
I'm betting than more so than any other president, Obama is used to being criticized for everything from how he looks to how he speaks from whites, blacks, and everyone in between.
Give me a break, Salam, you're out on a fantasy.
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n--Y--toodogsWinski
Good thing ronnie raygun is gone...NOBODY has to listen to anything that fool said, wrote or made up as he floated along on the press...raygun got this country into more fiscal trouble (and therefore geo-political trouble) and anyone before but certainly not after his time in dc....chimpy saw to that......
Chandidevi
Gorbachev (sp.?) said, and I heard him say it in an interview, that it was not because of Reagan that he tore down the wall. He was already in the process of tearing it down, when Reagan said it, and Reagan took credit for it after it happened. Reagan was nothing more than a "B" movie actor. I was once one of his devotees, but after a lifetime of being a Republican I changed to Democrat because I saw the disingenuous character of most Republicans, particularly in the 2000 election. The core of the party is cracked and dissolving. So, stop holding Reagan up as a hero. He was only a hero in the same sense that he was a movie hero...NOT!!!
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